Vane graduated from the University of Birmingham in 1946 and earned a doctorate at the University of Oxford in 1953. He spent several years on the faculty of Yale University (1953–55) in the United States before returning to England to join the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences of the University of London. In 1973 he became research director of the Wellcome Research Laboratories in Beckenham, Kent, a post he held until 1985. In 1986 Vane founded the William Harvey Research Institute, attached to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, which funded cardiovascular research. He remained with the institute, in various positions, until his death.

As part of his Nobel Prize-winning work, Vane demonstrated that aspirininhibits the formation of prostaglandins associated with pain, fever, and inflammation, thus providing a physiological rationale for the effectiveness of the world’s most widely used drug. He also discovered prostacyclin, an important prostaglandin that plays a vital role in the process of blood coagulation.